


A Gift in Parting

by stubliminalmessaging



Series: Kink Meme Fills [11]
Category: The Hobbit (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-09
Updated: 2013-01-17
Packaged: 2017-11-24 07:16:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/631840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stubliminalmessaging/pseuds/stubliminalmessaging
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for this prompt for the Hobbit Kink Meme on livejournal: "I've just rewatched Hobbit and noticed - Fili and Kili have matching clasps in their hair. The story behind this please? (To me, they're parting gifts from their mother, but I'd like to see what others come up with."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

When Thorin had taken Dis’ two sons from their home to work in the towns of men, she had been worried. Since their father’s and grandfather’s death and the loss of Erebor, her boys and her brother were all she had. To have all three of them leave her at once was blow to the chest. She had travelled through towns occupied by men before and she knew that as a whole, they were a race with little to no kindness to offer to the likes of dwarves. She feared their cruelness and the mark it would leave upon her young sons, so naïve and inexperienced in the world.

The first time they returned from being away working a few months, they seemed older, taller, and more mature. From their work they had developed a sturdiness they did not have before they left. When Dis hugged them each in turn for the first time in months, she felt how they could each envelope her in their arms. They had an easier relationship with her brother also. She noticed that at dinner they often sat on either side of him and nudged him back and forth between them with their shoulders until he snapped at them to stop. Thorin’s patience with them had grown exponentially, and while he was still weary and cranky sometimes, Dis occasionally saw a much younger dwarven prince than she had seen in a very, very long time.

A few years down the road, Dis finally got accustomed to the idea of her boys working in towns full of cruel humans. She trusted her brother more than anyone else in her life, but when he returned home once, somber and more tense than usual, she feared for the worst. That night while Fili and Kili had gone to the pub to relax with their fellow dwarves for a change, Dis came upon Thorin leaning on the mantel of their fireplace, eyes fixed on the flickering flames.

As soon as he heard her pad into the room, he began speaking, never once taking his eyes off the fire. He told her about the wizard who came to him at the pub in the last human town they had worked in. The wizard told him of a quest to take back Erebor from the calamity, to return to their home and bring their fallen kingdom back to its former glory.

She asked how some strange wizard would know anything about their home and their history. Thorin told her about the signs that had been read. He told her that it mattered not what she told him about it being an impossibly challenging journey, riddled with danger at every turn. If there was even the faintest chance that they could fight to get back their home, he had to _try_.

Her jaw set at her brother’s stubborn nature, and she asked why he came to ask her if he already had the decision made. He did not answer her question directly immediately. He paced the room, his footsteps slow and his gaze locked on the coals at the heart of the fire. He continued, saying that he would be leaving in hopefully no more than two weeks, after he assembled his Company and gathered supplies for the journey. Finally, he paused before the fire, and Dis could tell this great, brave dwarf prince was nervous. Knowing her brother as well as she did, she knew she was right to be worried by this.

He told her, after a moment’s consideration, that there would be no argument on this tonight. It could wait until the morning. No amount of bargaining or refusal would change his mind. The last thing he said before leaving the room in favour of his own bed was that he was not _asking_ her, he was _warning_ her, because he was going to ask Fili and Kili to accompany him.

It felt like hours after Thorin left the room before Dis finally retreated to her own room. She was numb, mostly because she knew that her boys would sooner die than miss a chance to accompany their uncle on his adventure.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dis makes Fili and Kili their last breakfast before they leave to meet the Company for the journey to take back Erebor.

Dis was miles away from happy on the day that her sons were to leave for the Shire. Her brother left earlier, partially because he had a meeting with their fellow dwarves, and in some small part, she thought, because he wanted to allow Dis to have her last few hours with Fili and Kili alone. He trusted them to find their way themselves, because, as he put it, if they could not get to the Shire without him, they would never make it on such a long and treacherous journey as they planned.

Always a mother to the core, she had double-checked their packs before they even woke up on the morning of their departure. When she heard them stirring from sleep in their room, getting awake and dressed for the journey, she started making their breakfast. She paused with the thought that this would be the last time she would get to cook their breakfast in however many months it would make them to reclaim their home. The next breakfast she got to cook for them could even be _in_ Erebor. The thought made her smile as she snuck a tin of homemade cookies into each of their packs.

After Fili got up and sunk down into his chair at the table, still yawning and pushing back his wild golden hair, Dis set a plate down before him. While he was distracted with devouring everything he had been given, Dis snuck up behind him with a brush and attempted to conquer the knots and tangles in his wavy blond mane. He swatted away at her hand and told her to lay off and let him eat. Kili wandered in, scratching at the mess on his own scalp and sitting down to eat his own breakfast. He looked up from the table at Fili and snorted, chewing sloppily as his brother struggled initially, but eventually gave in and allowed Dis to fuss over him. Kili was only subdued from his snickers when his mother told him he would be next.

After Dis had their hair brushed out smooth and detangled and their clothes straightened, they helped her moved the dishes from breakfast and piled them by the sink. She knew her time with her boys was growing short when they straightened up, stretching and cracking their backs.

Before she allowed them to put on their boots and coats, she sat them down one more time in their seats at the kitchen table, then disappeared into her room for a moment. She returned with a long slim box. She opened it and then set it on the table between them. They leaned forward on their chairs curiously, studying the ornate silver hair clasps that rested on a bed of black fabric, nestled into the box. Dis explained that these clasps were very old, and they were one of the few relics she had left from Erebor. She recalled, somewhat somberly, that these items only made it out of the city because one had been in her hair and the other had been in Thorin’s, the day that they had fled their home. She told the boys that she wanted them to have them. She said that they did not have to wear them, but she would like them to have them near, and to always remember that she was with them.

They each took one of the clasps in their hands, and inspected them, turning them over and watching them shine in the morning light that leaked through the window. They shared a look and a nod and then Fili was holding the clasp up to Dis and asking her to put it in his hair for him.

Initially she was in shock. It had been years and years since either of her sons had allowed her to do anything more than brush their hair for them. Even before they had left to work with Thorin, they had taken to tending to each other’s hair. It was a brotherly activity that she had long been excluded from. Her tears caught in her long lashes but her hands were too busy parting Fili’s blond hair and braiding it deftly to wipe them away. She slid the clasp in to hold the thick braid in place, letting the fish-tail hang freely and loosely on the other side of the clasp. She affectionately brushed her hand through his hair one more time, before moving on to Kili. She stood behind her younger son, duplicating the same steps, minus the braid because she knew how her child always hated braids.

When Fili and Kili stood in the lobby by the door of their house, coats on, boots buckled, and shoulders heavy with the supplies in their packs, Dis did not know what to say. When Kili stepped towards her and wrapped his arms around her, she could not stop herself from latching on and never wanting let go. Fili joined his brother so they each had an arm around their mother’s shoulders. When she let out her first sob, they rubbed at her back and murmured to her that soon enough, before she knew it, they would be a family again, but in Erebor this time.

She held onto them for as long as she possibly could, telling them they were among the most brave, strong, and perfect dwarves she had ever known. She could feel their tiny smiles as they kissed her forehead in turn, and she stood on her toes, and kissed each of their cheeks. They were tall, like their father had been, and it had been many years since she could reach their foreheads.

When they parted, she clasps one of their hands in each of hers and makes them promise to take care of each other and to listen to their uncle. They agreed. She knew that it went without saying with all the time they had spent with her brother, but she reminded them that they could trust Thorin beyond any other person, and he would never lead them into a situation that would put them in danger. They told her they would. Lastly, her tears never ceasing, she told them she loved them and they told her the same. They shared one last embrace, and then that left her clutching together the front of her robe in their doorway.

She watched them leave, until they were tiny specks in her vision, and then they disappeared and she stood in the doorway for a few minutes after that. She wondered how long it would be before she saw them again. _In Erebor,_ she thought with triumph.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was ten months before she heard anything from anyone. It had been the loneliest ten months of her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last part of this. Angst ahoy.

Within a week it felt again to Dis like her sons had just gone away with Thorin to work. As if they would be back in three or four months and she would be cooking their meals and washing their laundry and making their beds again. It just felt like a longer-than usual gap in between their visits home. Nothing to worry about, they were out working hard.

It was ten months before she heard anything from anyone. It had been the loneliest ten months of her life, and she thought back to how, years ago, after her husband’s death and when the boys were old enough that they were often away for days on end in the woods and she would get so lonely, Thorin had suggested that maybe she should find someone new. Someone to spend her time with and laugh with and love, because Fili and Kili could not live with her forever, eventually they would leave home to make something of themselves.

She had looked up at him, into his eyes, a much paler blue than her own, and had asked him if he had ever met his One. She asked him if he knew what it was like to have that taken away from you. She knew that he had not, he had always spent his days fretting and worrying over the sanity of their grandfather, and their father, and himself. He feared that the illness would be passed down through the generations and eventually run rampant through his head. Because of this he avoided getting attached to things. He distanced himself from his natural gold-lust in a way that was most un-dwarf-like. He did not allow himself to covet, be it gold or companion. So determined was he to remain unattached, to stave off the illness, that he drove away and possible suitors and perpetuated his own loneliness.

But Dis did not remind him of that. She just softly told him that once one has felt love, it never felt right to try and replace what had been lost. Fili and Kili’s father had been hers since the moment they set eyes on each other. They only courted for three weeks before they were married, and less than a month later she announced herself pregnant with the heir to the line of Durin.

Fili was perfect when he was born, with his father’s colouring but the deep blue eyes of his mother’s line. Thorin had resigned himself to never taking on a wife and having children, so he was to be the crownless king after Thorin, for what it was worth after Erebor was lost. For five years he ruled their household, a king in his own right, and when Kili was born he had hated him. Hated the dark hair that distinguished him as of their lineage more than Fili’s own blond head did. Hated that he got so much more attention from his mother and father and uncle, who were _his_ , they did not belong to the stinky brat that they called his brother.

This went on for three years and Fili’s distaste for his sibling never ceased. It got worse when the rodent was always pulling at his sleeve or hanging off of his jacket, or worse, _pulling at his hair_. He told their mother to stop letting Kili follow him places but she told him he should get used to it, for he had just recently spoken his first word: “ _Fili_ ”. She said with a smile and a placating pet to Fili’s head that his little brother loved him and wanted to follow him on all of his adventures and that he should love him too.

That same year, their father was at a pub in Dale when a group of men from out of town started a fight over a supposed gambling debt. A good dwarf through and through, he had offered to pay the debt to the one to which it was owed. The man who was doing the owing had taken insult at his offer, aided by a good amount of ale, and told him that he did not need filthy dwarf money to cover his debts. When Fili and Kili’s father had insisted, the debtor pulled a knife on him and stabbed him in the stomach and then the neck and he later died of his injuries.

When news of her husband’s death had reached Dis, she had gathered her boys in her lap and told them that their father was killed and that their uncle would be helping to support them from then on. Fili had sat in her lap silence while Kili, too young to really understand, had gummed at his mother’s braids and coat. Seeming to have decided something, Fili took his little brother’s tiny hands and looked into his eyes with fierce determination. He vowed then that he was going to work his hardest to keep Kili and his mother safe forever, and that he would never _ever_ let anything like this happen to them again.

Dis had cried and Kili had giggled and started chewing on Fili’s fingers, delighted that the thing with all the yellow on its head was finally paying attention to him and not pushing him and making him cry. Fili had asked his mother not to cry and he admitted that he would probably need Uncle Thorin’s help for awhile while he finished growing up, but once he was done that and had a proper beard and nose, he would make sure no one could ever hurt them ever again.

And he had not. He had stayed true to his word. He had, that is, until the day, ten months after Fili and Kili left her on their doorstep, when she and the other dwarves of Erid Luin began to hear whispers. Whispers of the Company of Thorin Oakenshield and their quest to take back Erebor. Whispers that it _had_ been taken back, that there would be messengers soon to bring word and they would move all the willing dwarves back into the mountain and all would be right again in the world.

But nothing would be right in Dis’ world. Not when she had received a messenger at her door that morning. It was a surprise to see Bofur, a dwarf she remembered meeting firstly because he had presented many wonderful toys to Kili and Fili when they were young and secondly because he was never to be seen without a characteristically warm smile on his face. He was almost hard to recognize when he was not smiling, and Dis did not understand why until he cleared his throat to inform her that Thorin II Oakenshield, son of Thrain, son of Thror, had fallen in the Battle of Five Armies (though the name meant nothing to her as a numb settled over her mind) after successfully slaying Smaug and taking back Erebor. She could not very well hear as he gave her his condolences but his final comment brought her back to the there and then.  
When she asked what he meant by _their_ bodies being buried in the royal catacombs deep in the mountain, he cringed and she knew what was coming. He dug into his pack and presented her with the two silver hair clasps that she had carefully placed in the hair of her two beloved sons the last time she had seen them. The blood staining the silver told of a battle that in one fell swoop had taken everything away from her.


End file.
